In progress - infinite loop while run spring boot

Community
1

Hi everyone!

i am run simple spring pipiline via jenkins.

Here is my pipiline

**pipeline {**
**    agent any**

**    stages {**
**        stage('Run Spring Boot') {**
**            steps {**
**                dir('D:/cakctus/cakctus-eureka') {**
**                    bat 'mvn spring-boot:run'**
**                }**
**            }**
**        }**
**    }**
**}**

but status of the last building is in progress (not stoping) and spring but works fine. Who can explain why ?

2

Hi @cakctus , your pipeline behaves as expected.

The command it runs, “mvn spring-boot:run” is a foreground task meant for development purposes as documented in Running Your Application :: Spring Boot, as it is using the Maven plugin for Spring Boot quick

Unless this task receives a “stop” (Using Ctrl-C in a Terminal) or “kill” signal (aborting the pipeline), it will keep running in foreground, hence the behavior of the pipeline.

What is the expected goal of the pipeline: is it to build and test the application? Or is it something else?

1 Like
3

Hi @dduportal thanks for response. Right, expected goal was for development environment. I assume if i run java -jar cactus-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar behavior will be the same ? (infinite loading)

4

Yes, it will be the same result: the application will be running in foreground.

Usual web servers are running in background and are managed by a secondary system (command systemcl for instance on Linux, or ‘Restart-Service’ on powershell).

You can send the application in background, but you have to be careful: if the pipeline stops, you need a system (usually named “Garbage collecting”) to make sure the background application is stopped.

1 Like
5

Which is best practices to run an application (spring, react) or another type of app, in pipeline using jenkins ?

6

A Jenkins pipeline is not aimed at running an application. It is an automation engine, usually used for Continuous Integration (aka. “Lint” → “Build” and “Test”) and Continuous Deployment (CI → “Deploy”).

Of course you might want to start and stop the application for running tests: in that case it’s not the pipeline’s role to start and stop the application. It’s the development tool: in your case, it is Maven’s role, as it has Spring boot plugin to help you. You should read Testing in Spring Boot | Baeldung for instance to learn.
The pipeline role would be to run the mvn test or mvn verify commands, which would take care of starting/stopping an instance of the application for each test suite.

Instead, if you want to deploy your application using a pipeline, then you have to explain to us what is the deployment target and the system used to start and stop the application. Usually, your pipeline will build the application artifact (e.g. the JAR file in your case) and then will deploy it to the target environment (e.g. copy it and restart the application server).

7

The purpose of deployment is to run Spring application using Jenkins. For this I use pipiline which is below.

**pipeline {**
**    agent any**

**    stages {**
**        stage('Run Spring Boot') {**
**            steps {**
**                dir('D:/cakctus/cakctus-eureka/target') {**
**                    bat 'java -jar cakctus-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar'**
**                }**
**            }**
**        }**
**    }**
**}**

You mentioned starting and stopping the application, if the commands above are used to start it, I assume that a separate pipiline is needed to stop the application. Isn’t that right?

You also mentioned the system (usually called “Garbage Collector”), can you please elaborate?

Thanks!

8

Use Jenkins to build and deploy the application but do not use Jenkins to run the application in the way you want to do it.
The pipeline here will block and waits for the application to finish.
And how do you know for your stop pipeline which process it needs to kill?

Usually on Linux but also Windows an application that should always run is installed as a service. This ensures that when the machine is rebooted (e.g. after installing OS patches) the application automatically starts.
Services also have features to automatically restart the application if it crashes.

Note that you might need proper permissions to start/stop services, e.g on Linux you usually must be root to do this.

For customer facing applications I consider starting it the way you want to do it as a no go.

9

A nice “get started” to manage SpringBoot service on Windows: Spring Boot Application as a Service | Baeldung